well it's only $25,000 a year but the initial filing fee is $185,000. So much for computers and the internet 'leveling' the playing field for small businesses with online business presences.

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Come 2012, confused camera customers might be able to point their browsers to a Web address that looks very different from what's available today: support.canon.
That's because the organization in charge of such names, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, is planning on a dramatic rewriting of the rules for Web addresses that could demote .com's importance.

Today there are just a few of what are called generic top-level domains--.com, .net, .org, .biz, and .edu, for example. But ICANN wants to open the door to, potentially, hundreds or thousands more of these GTLDs.
That's a big change, especially for those who have a brand to protect on the Internet and were taken by surprise by the virtual land grab that took place with .com addresses in the 1990s. Here's a look at what GTLDs mean now and in the future.

What is a generic top-level domain, and how do I get one?
In an Internet address, the top-level domains is what comes after the last period in the main server address. There are two broad types: the generic top-level domains such as .com and country code top-level domains such as .jp for Japan or .de for Germany. With ICANN's expansion, though, the term "generic" is something of a misnomer: it could include not only something like .auto or .hotel, but also branded domains such as .ibm or .safeway.

When .com addresses became must-have business accoutrements, companies scrambled to register their own or buy them from those who already owned them. Things will be different with the GTLD expansion though: instead of registering a domain for a modest fee through a registry such as GoDaddy, those who want a GTLD of their own must apply to ICANN. And it's expensive: table stakes are $185,000 for the application fee and $25,000 a year to operate the registry. If someone else wants the domain, bidding will determine the winner. And another fee will crop up when a registry is setting up secondary domains on a top-level domain: the first 50,000 are free, but they will cost 25 cents apiece after that.
For a detailed look at the process, check the most recent GTLD applicant guidebook, but be warned: the most recent version is a 312-page, 4.7MB download.

Why expand the range of top-level domains?

ICANN, a not-for-profit corporation founded in 1998 to oversee the Internet address system, tries to promote competition, including in the market for domain names. Most prominent global sites today need an address ending in .com, and one company, VeriSign, is the registry that oversees that domain. A company wanting more control over its brand on the Internet might want to apply to ICANN to become a registry controlling a domain with its own name. Other companies might want to operate broader registries open to all comers, perhaps with a very generic domain such as .web or something more specific such as .art. GTLDs could help people launch Web sites using a family name even if the .com version is taken. And cities are expected to get in on the action, too, with local domains such as .sydney.

There are a lot of companies in the world, of course, and ICANN appears to be bracing itself for a lot of new activity: in notes from its September meeting, ICANN indicated it thinks it will be able to accommodate adding something like 1,000 new domains each year.

Big companies worry a lot about controlling their brands, and GTLDs offers a new mechanism for doing so. A company that secured a GTLD with its own name doesn't have to open it up to use by others, said Karla Valente, director of ICANN's product services communications. It is possible to have a "top-level domain that doesn't have second- and third-level selling. There are many brand owners that find this strategy very appealing," with their own control over the domain rather than reliance on third parties. "They also believe this could lead them to all kinds of different branding and marketing strategies," Valente said.

Filling ICANN's coffers is apparently not a reason to expand the range of GTLDs, though. "The model of the program is to be revenue neutral. We are not here to make money on new TLDs," Valente said.
When people start seeing GTLDs arrive?
"I think 2012 at the earliest, Valente said.

But the run-up to offering GTLDs is already well under way. Their arrival has been delayed to deal with concerns from trademark holders, the U.S. Commerce Department (PDF), and ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (PDF), which reports to ICANN's board. But the expansion is proceeding, and ICANN expects to approve the final GTLD guidelines, publicize them, and accept applications for a window a few weeks long in 2011--more than two years later than originally expected. So companies that might be affected by GTLDs probably should start thinking about them sooner rather than later.

The actual arrival will be gradual. "We have to pace ourselves how we add things to the root," Valente said, referring to the servers at the heart of the Internet address system that link the textual names people type into a browser with the actual numeric addresses those Web servers use. And the root servers have been undergoing significant change of late, with the arrival of IPv6 (Internet Protocol version 6) to provide vastly more addresses and the shift to a technology called DNSSEC that makes the domain name system more secure.
ICANN hasn't decided yet when the next window for submitting applications would open.

Who needs to care?
At the outset, chiefly those with trademarks and brands to promote or defend are the ones who should pay the most attention. Unfortunately, there's no clear path about what they should do.
Japanese camera maker Canon has announced its intention to apply for the .canon domain, an asset that would stamp its communications and Net presence with its own brand. "With the adoption of the new GTLD system, which enables the direct utilization of the Canon brand, Canon hopes to globally integrate open communication policies that are intuitive and easier to remember compared with existing domain names such as 'canon.com,'" Canon said of its move. Not everybody will come to the same conclusion, though.

"I would not recommend brands invest in GTLDs at this stage of the game. The URL is only the holding place for what is most relevant--content," said Rick Gardinier, chief digital officer of marketing agency Brunner. "Customers will flock to great content and engaging experiences, not to domain names."

Steve Stolfi, vice president of global partnerships at branding firm CT Corsearch, is more bullish on the idea. "It completely changes the landscape of the Internet and how future commerce will happen on the Internet," he said. "Now a company can have a dot-brand and deliver more personalized and individual Web services to people. For example, a major consumer products company can have .anheuser-busch, and can have all its products--budweiser.anheuser-busch, michelob.anheuser-busch, corona.anheuser-busch. A banking company could take it one step further [by offering] each one of its customers a dedicated domain, so when they're doing banking on the Internet, they would have their own secure domain."

Steve Stolfi is apparently unfamiliar with the subdomain. Chase could already give everyone a dogen.chase.com subdomain if they gave a damn about protecting your money or whatever.

Also, why the hell isn't this in the random news stories thread? It's why we have a thread for random news stories. For you to put your random news stories into. It's not like you thought, "Man, what type of post is this? It obviously does not fit into any existing category!" You know it's news. Don't be a page-cluttering asshat._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

Also those digest threads tend to have things lost in them quite regularly.

Also, this is a pretty big deal.

This seems like a short sighted decision which COULD have far reaching effects...or it could be no big deal. Either way I think this topic is significant enough to have it's own thread BECAUSE it something that people should keep tabs on to see what the repercussions (if any) are._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

Uhh... no? News stories come from news outlets. The pleasures thread isn't a thread for news. The youtube thread isn't a thread for news. There are lots of different threads, for lots of different things. I cannot believe you asked this question.

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Also those digest threads tend to have things lost in them quite regularly.

And yet we have arguments raging for pages and pages in the discussion forum as we speak about issues people find important. Democracy in action! People respond to the stories they find interesting! Other stories fade away! Yay, democracy!

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Also, this is a pretty big deal.

I doubt it. There may be a .canon, but then what? How often do you type in an address anyway? You want to find Canon, you google "canon camera." Everything works the same, except now you can have funny domains like, "fondle.my.canon." Even if you did type in the address, the experience is the same, it's still coming through the same tubes, in the back of the same big truck. It's just a truck called fondle.my.canon instead of www.canon.com. Now, if top-level domain holders get preferential treatment from asshole ISPs who chuck net neutrality under the bus, then we'll talk. Until then this is another .tv or .biz._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

This thread is really getting off topic. Could you guys start a new one and continue your discussion there?_________________Scire aliquid laus est, pudor est non discere velle
"It is laudable to know something, it is disgraceful to not want to learn"
~Seneca

Uhh... no? News stories come from news outlets. The pleasures thread isn't a thread for news. The youtube thread isn't a thread for news. There are lots of different threads, for lots of different things. I cannot believe you asked this question.

And I can't believe you'd post a spam like response of "why'd you make this thread?"

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Also those digest threads tend to have things lost in them quite regularly.

And yet we have arguments raging for pages and pages in the discussion forum as we speak about issues people find important. Democracy in action! People respond to the stories they find interesting! Other stories fade away! Yay, democracy!

And true Democracy is flawed and unbalanced and doesn't work. Yay for Despotically ruled Anarchy! (remember the school district in Iowa that wanted to remove algebra from the curriculum?)

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Also, this is a pretty big deal.

I doubt it. There may be a .canon, but then what? How often do you type in an address anyway? You want to find Canon, you google "canon camera." Everything works the same, except now you can have funny domains like, "fondle.my.canon." Even if you did type in the address, the experience is the same, it's still coming through the same tubes, in the back of the same big truck. It's just a truck called fondle.my.canon instead of www.canon.com. Now, if top-level domain holders get preferential treatment from asshole ISPs who chuck net neutrality under the bus, then we'll talk. Until then this is another .tv or .biz.

Well you've kinda proven my point: it's something that may or may not wind up becoming one big mess, but if it does goes bad it'll be real bad.

Also I don't see what Tuvalu leasing their domain name like they did the "900" phone code to provide the nation with revenue due to lack of natural resources has anything to do with anything._________________...if a single leaf holds the eye, it will be as if the remaining leaves were not there.http://about.me/omardrake

You sound like Republicans who decry opinions they don't like as "judicial activism." You think my post was "spam," do you? Well boo-fucking-hoo. It might also be called "criticism," but that would require you to have an intelligent response. "Spam" tries to get you off the hook without one of those, because you haven't got one. You didn't even try to claim this is of equal importance to France relocating the Roma, or the ACORN pimp, each of which got their own threads. You just went for the schoolyard, "yeah, well, you're an idiot!" response... which is why your thread sucks, dude.

If you had brilliant insights to offer, maybe you could carry a topic like this as a standalone thread. As it is, you apparently can't, so you should probably stick to the news thread. Or come up with a better way of handling people who disagree with you. Or find a forum where people are cowed by insipid criticisms like "your post is spam!"_________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

I was gonna start a sentence with "All things said and done, " but then I realised I'd just being saying new stuff about what still hadn't been done.

But ehm, Dogen? I think if someone feels a particular news item would benefit from discussion they should feel free to start a new thread. If worst comes to worst Dennis will flame them and someone will post pictures of pickled monkey balls.

But ehm, Dogen? I think if someone feels a particular news item would benefit from discussion they should feel free to start a new thread. If worst comes to worst Dennis will flame them and someone will post pictures of pickled monkey balls.

I can live with that.

Yeah. I was just giving him a hard time. Sometimes, it's what I do. Also, sometimes I post relevantly. Then other times I spend the whole day saying, "Say what one more god damn time," and, "English, motherfucker, do you speak it?" to everyone for no reason. Sometimes, I do all three (like today), and just go with whichever thread catches on. I had something relevant up there, but that ball kinda dropped with "it may or may not wind up being anything at all." So I went with the backup!_________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman